#WeAreBrave
SPEAK OUT. SPEAK LOUD. SPEAK TOGETHER.
Welcome to a safe, carefully moderated world of testimonials from survivors of sexual assault and rape. Join our community by sharing your story or showing your support. This platform is meant to heal and not re-traumatize. Please remember to practice self-care if reading these stories is triggering to you.
The #WeAreBrave Story Platform has made BraveMissWorld.com the #1 Google search result worldwide for survivors seeking to share their stories. Yet it was born by accident. When Miss World Linor Abargil decided to step forward and speak publicly about her rape in 2008, she launched the website LinorSpeaksOut. Her mailbox was quickly flooded with emails from survivors wanting to share their stories with someone who would believe them and offer words of support. Linor met with many of the women and men who wrote to her, and included their stories in her film.
When the documentary Brave Miss World was completed and launched in 2014, LinorSpeaksOut was merged into BraveMissWorld.com, which became the online hub for survivors wanting to share their stories. With generous grants from The Artemis Rising Foundation, The Fledgling Fund, The Francis Family Foundation, and The Roy A. Hunt Foundation among others, the filmmakers and a small team of volunteers have curated this one-of-a-kind collection of over 2,500 testimonials, each carefully moderated to screen out any remarks that are disrespectful of survivors. We are committed to making sure that everyone submitting and reading stories on our site feels safe.
Our goal is to change the conversation around assault and rape. Women’s voices are finally being heard. Until now, we have not demanded that the culture be changed. We are saying no to the deafening silence that has surrounded rape and assault. We encourage members of our community to share their stories, because we believe that healing begins with speaking out and receiving support. Each story on our site receives a supportive comment from a trained advocate, as well as comments from our #WeAreBrave community. Every story is incredibly different and unique, but they all share the tremendous strength and resilience of survivors.
We know our platform works, because of the feedback from those using our site whose lives have changed in significant ways as a result of watching the film and/or sharing their story with others. Every day, new viewers and visitors discover and explore #WeAreBrave and many write to thank us for creating and maintaining this important space. For all those sharing their unique personal experiences and brave accounts of the lasting emotional impact of rape and assault, you are not alone.
Our work needs you. Your continuing support has enabled us to upgrade this site and add the ability to submit audio and visual testimonials. Please DONATE to help us make sure this resource continues to remain available to all those who need it. All donations are 100% tax deductible through our 501c3 fiscal sponsor, Los Angeles Filmforum.
Contact us here: producers@BraveMissWorld.com
Watch the Emmy-nominated Brave Miss World on…
Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80222025
iTunes: http://apple.co/1Og611n
Amazon: http://amzn.com/B0194BJ5MO
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bravemissworld
My Story
Initiation into adulthood
Family
A learning experience
Why
Workplace Sexual Harassment
Surviving my father
Drugged
It’s Your Fault
A Private College; A Private Rape
His Charming Ways
Date Rape
Erase and Rewind
Still Going
If I Were Stronger Then
Bringing the Stories to Light
Frozen in fear
Victimization
Spring Break Nightmare
Why
UNEXPOSED – AFTER 30 YEARS OF EXTREME...
Hateful
my story
These Men are More Protected Than We...
He ruined my life
Wanted Love But Got Rape
The Mailman Raped Me
Scammer
Finally ready to tell my story
Domestic Rape is Real
Drugged and Gang Raped
Afraid, Ashamed and Alone
Family
My/our German “Weinstein” Case
Too Young
Why: A Poem About My Rape
Someone so close to me
Raped by stranger x2
When My Body Wasn’t Mine.
Shattered
First Friend at University
Despedida
Red Flags
slutshamedchild
Metoo
Male dancer
Alcohol
So drunk I can’t remember
Army
I Didn’t Even Know Him
Awareness Among Teenage Boys
Why me?
Repressed Memory
I was just 9.
Case Closed
Three Times in a Row
Spring Break
I’m Not Sure
Sexually Assaulted in Cuba
Molested at 3
Forgiving My Rapist
My Own Family
Me & My Girlfriend
יש חיים אחרי אונס
Raped by Abusive Husband
I Am Brave
Males can be victims too
Freshman Year
My Fight
University Bar
Date Rape
Drugged raped and failed by justice
I Said No
Semper Fi
יש חיים אחרי אונס
Stranger, Friend, Lawyer, and Youth Leader
I was raped
Spoke out and was blamed
These Men are More Protected Than We...
אוףףףף
I thought he was my friend
Stolen Innocence
Raped at the age of 16
I didn’t even know I was pregnant
I Didn’t Let It Kill Me
Too naïve
School Bathroom
The First time I shared…
Not Alone
my toxic relationship
I know when I see a rapist...
Memories in the Dark
Running With Bare Feet
Teatime
Set Up
Indigo
I returned to fine art in 1990 when I took at class in indigo dyeing at San Francisco State University. I was lucky that the instructor, Yoshiko Wada, and another student from her class, were in the East Bay so that we could carpool together. We would talk textiles on our weekly journey across the Bay Bridge to the Campus. The other student was an accomplished Quilter named Linda MacDonald. Linda lived in Willits near the famous Mendocino Art Center, but traveled to Berkeley to attend this class once a week.
The Indigo vat was made in a 32-gallon garbage can and had to be kept covered between dyeing sessions. Indigo is a unique rich blue dye that develops with an oxidization process when exposed to air. Dipping the fabric several times, and allowing the natural fiber to oxidize before dipping it again, creates darker shades of blue. The dye in the vat is created from a mixture of indigo pigment, various chemicals and a reducing agent to remove oxygen from the dye. It is a rich green color while in the vat, which shows up on the fabric before it is fully exposed to the air. The smell emitted from the dye is unusual, a musky odor in my mind. I like to think that it smells like the color blue. The vat needs to be carefully stirred and maintained between dyeing sessions. There is a “bloom” on the top of the vat created by oxidized indigo, making a bubbly and shiny ball of material reminiscent of a flower. The “bloom” gets moved to the side before entry of the pre-wetted fabric. The process reminds me of baking bread or making yogurt where the steps need to be carefully followed to achieve the desired results. In the process of bread and yogurt making, there are living cultures involved in order to create the product, and with the creation and dyeing process of indigo, it has that same feeling of being alive.
In order to create interesting patterns, my classmates and I would use resist techniques on the fabric like pastes, stitching and clamping. Simple household items like clothespins could be used to create patterns by folding and then placing the pins at intervals along the fold lines. Beautiful and surprising results were achieved using these methods.
Image of Indigo dye on fabric during the oxidization process.
My dream of being a professional artist, all started in early childhood, and the first memories of my creations go back to Nursery School. I loved playing with all kinds of materials, like paint, clay, and crayons, just to name a few examples.
Mel (Melanie), painting at Jack and Jill Nursery School, Walnut Creek, California, 1960.
In 1974, a neighbor in Marin where I was living at the time and studying art at College of Marin told me about an Art School in Mexico. I ended up sending off slides of my work with an application to the Instituto Allende, and was delighted to hear that I was accepted. I began my journey to study there in San Miguel de Allende by flying to Mexico City in January of 1975. A bus ride completed that journey.
When I first arrived, I moved in with a family who had two small children, including a newborn. It seemed like a safe living situation for a 19-year-old woman, but that shortly proved to not be true when the husband started coming on to me. I ended up finding my own place on the other side of town. It was a spacious abode with a wall that was shared with a weaving factory next door. There were 2 adjoined bedrooms, a bathroom, a large living/kitchen area and a small concrete patio out the back door. There was no hot water, refrigerator or a telephone. When I needed hot water for dishes, I would boil some on the stove. For showers, I had to build a fire in a box below a water tank outside to get hot water. I felt much more secure living there and walking a further distance to the Instituto on the other side of town than living with the husband who had made me feel so unsafe. There was the Central Plaza, which was called the “Jardin” that was in the middle of town, and I would pass through it on my walk quite frequently. This was the site of fireworks and festivals, like the celebration of Cinco de Mayo. The streets were cobblestone and many charming shops and galleries were located downtown. The School itself was on a beautiful campus with large ornate doors in front that were closed when school was not in session.
Photo of the closed front doors of the Instituto Allende
I had heard about you and what you had done to other women before you appeared in my main living space one sunny spring afternoon pointing a gun at me.
You had a bandana wrapped around your face and tied behind your head.
I had heard you first, in the bathroom.
Dressed in a long polyester dress with colorful psychedelic patterns.
I wasn’t wearing any underwear or shoes.
I walked through the 2 bedrooms and turned left when I saw you standing there.
I screamed and shouted, “help me,” thinking that workers at the Weaving Factory would hear me and come rescue me.
Nobody came.
You said to me “Coyote” which I later learned meant to be quiet or to shut up.
You grabbed my shoulders and dragged me out the unlocked back door onto the concrete patio.
The tops of my feet got scraped.
I gave up.
I knew you were going to rape me.
I just wanted you to finish as quickly as possible.
You took off your belt and put down your gun.
Somehow I managed to pick up your gun and threw it over the wall embedded with glass on the top, into the alleyway. The same wall you had climbed over to get into my place through the unlocked back door.
Towards the end of this ordeal, I heard a knock on my door.
You left, climbing back over the wall.
I answered the door. My friend Rhonda had come by to visit me.
I told her what had happened and we walked to the Police Station nearby.
I had your belt with me. The one you left behind.
I went to the front counter, telling the officers behind the counter what had happened to me. They were laughing and playing cards at the time.
I showed them your belt.
They told me to bring you in if I saw you again.
I left with Rhonda and took a bath at the where place she lived. We didn’t talk about what happened.
We moved in together shortly after that.
I sent a telegram to my father and stepmother about what had happened to me.
Nobody came to help me.
Rhonda helped me when I got hepatitis A and could no longer go to school.
I was on my own when it came to figuring out how to return to the Bay Area.
I moved in with my father and stepmother.
They didn’t talk to me about what happened to me.
They sent me to a doctor who diagnosed me with type 1 diabetes. He showed me how to give myself insulin injections. He told me to practice by injecting oranges with empty syringes.
My mother told me years later that “You were never the same again” after what you did to me.
I survived. I gave up art for 15 years before realizing that I wanted to go back to art school. In those years, I became so disturbed that I had panic attacks, deep depression and needed to move in with my mother at age 30. I started therapy after becoming self destructive in my 20’s.
Depression also called “the blues” has been my long time companion. It has taken me a lifetime to heal. My iPhone predicts the words, depression, PTSD and C-PTSD for my text messages.
After my Indigo dyeing class at San Francisco State, I enrolled in the Textiles Fine Art program at California College of Arts and Crafts (now known as California College of the Arts) in Oakland. I was married at the time and had become pregnant with our daughter Emily right before classes started in September. Emily was born on May 13, 1991. By the Fall of 1992, I was a single mom and an art student. An inheritance from my mother who died in 1995, allowed me to graduate and to buy my first home.
I continued to work with indigo dyeing and created a large textile piece about my experience in Mexico.
After many years of therapy and other healing modalities, I recently started painting on canvas. Part of that process has been a Soul Retrieval session to bring back my 4 year old self who loved to paint. I am feeling uplifted and encouraged after many years of recurring periods of severe emotional pain. Stay tuned for more details about my new work.
One of my final pieces was a textile called “Out of the Blues.”The Statistics that Changed Me
It’s still happening
It Started With Rape
Help
Different face, but the same monster
Drug raped
Party Accident
I Want to Live
Graduation Night
Dad and Uncle Raped Me
Molestation
Sexual Assault
Abusée par un voisin de mes grands...
When I Was 7
Myself
I was raped
Black and Blue
Sexual Abuse
If your boyfriend does it is is...
My Abusers
לא יוצאים מזה…
Gang Rape
Losing My Virginity to a Campus Rape
לדבר, להלחם, לנצח
חיה בשני עולמות מקבילים
Time Heals
Why Didn’t You Speak Up?
Unethical or illegal?
Spousal Rape
Innocence Taken
Raped at the Air Force Academy
גבר אלים וחולני
I wish I would have been smarter
Moving on Alone from Rape
Less than a Minute of my Life
My Step Brother Raped Me
My Horrific Nightmare
Teenage Victim
Together, We Are Brave

Two Times
My Story
A Self Destructive Life
Marital Rape
Drunk and taken advantage of
Date Rape
One Morning
My story
Lightening Does Strike Twice
sexual assault
No Justice
I am 1 in 4
Keep it to myself
Victim No More
Young and Innocent
More Witness than I Care to Live...
I Didn’t See It In Time
Did He Rape My Mind Too
הסיפור שלי…
It Felt Like Rape
My story growing up with a secret
Breakin Burgler
De Los 6 a Los 12
Foreign City
Molestation
Thank you
Used
The healing process
Senior Year Ended In The First Week
My Boyfriend Raped Me
Was it Really Rape
Victim of sexual assault
Sex doll
My Life, My Achievement
Didn’t Know Until Later
my story-and where i “took it”…
My experience as an intern in highschool
A young mother
Different face, but the same monster
The Elevator Man
Mistaken Identity
Brock and Will
Still Unable to Tell People
Broken
Okay, Not Okay
His name was Kenneth
Please Allow Me To Be Heard
Still Terrified
Doesn’t Ever Really Go Away…
Rape by Boyfriend
Unhealthy Relationship
Undertones Throughout My Life
You were supposed to be my friend
הטרידו אותי
Rape
Touched
37 Years Ago
Need help
Feelings After I was Raped 20 plus...
Too drunk to respond
Infatuation
Because of You
I’ve lost my trust with men
Worthless
Perfect on Paper
En Enero de 2010
Identity?
I didn’t enderstand what was happening
More Than Once
Stranger Rape
Raped When I Was 12
Is It Really Rape?
Raped Twice and Attempted Rape Once No...
I Am A Survivor
Assault
The Night That Changed My Life
Summer 2019
Was it rape?
My stepfather
No means yes to some
היי לינור
Breaking the Silence

Chaos
2 Years Ago
My Sister and I were Abused
Raped
First Time Sharing
My Daddy
Marital Rape
לפני 14 שנים
2 Years Ago
7th Grade Assault
Raped in the Air Force
Nightmare
Why Me Over and Over?
Did I ask for this?
היי
Rape Shaming
I don’t know what happened
My Snowball Effect
High School Orientation
15
Raped at 17
Realization of Rape
Rape
Flashbacks
I Own My Story
incest
School Prom
I can’t remember before it started
Cafeteria Food
Ex Boyfriend
Assaulted
Supe que fue un abuso cuando ya...
Simply My Story
Why me?
Mi Historia
More Than Once
Black Girl
Stuck
A Child
Prom Night
MS13
They Laughed
My Story
UNEXPOSED – AFTER 30 YEARS OF EXTREME...
From Scared Girl to Strong Mother
I was very dumb.
Chiropractor
My Fault or His
My/our German “Weinstein” Case
The Night That Changed My Life
My 21st Birthday
My Mother was raped and told me...
Weak
You Were Suppose To Protect Me
Worst Day Ever
What sent me over the edge
Case Dropped by Prosecutor
Hotel
The Diaper in the Corner
He was family
Sexual assault
Date Rape
I can’t remember if I said yes...
Feeling Dirty
Too naïve
Cavemen
My Ex-husband
Who Do I Trust
Sexual Assault
Por Fin Puedo Decirlo
I Was 16
Planned Rape
הטראומה הכי קשה בחיי
Exposing Rapists – A Poem
My Story of a Gang Rape
All men are the same
Pastor’s Son
Ms.
Seis Años
Just Words
Michelle Johnston
First “Real” Boyfriend
My Side
My so called “best friend”
Metoo
From a Boyfriend
Braver
